Does my business need an app?

Sooner or later somebody says it: you should really have an app. Sometimes it is a customer, sometimes a nephew, sometimes an agency that builds them.

For almost every local business the honest answer is no — not yet, and probably not ever. Not because apps are bad, but because a good website already does nearly everything an app would, for the people who matter most to you: the ones who have never heard of you.

This is how to tell the difference, what an app really costs to keep alive, and the in-between option most people have never been told about.

• A website is found before anyone knows your name. An app is only installed after they already trust you.
• Apple turns away apps that are just a website in a wrapper. A "simple app version of our site" is exactly what its rules reject.
• An app is not a one-off cost. It needs developer accounts, yearly rebuilds and store reviews for as long as it exists.
• A website can be installed on the home screen and, on iPhone as well as Android, can send notifications.
• An app earns its place when customers use it every week, or it needs something only an app can do.

Think about how a new customer finds a groomer, a plumber or a bakery. They search Google, look at the map, read a few reviews, tap through to a website, and call or book.

An app appears nowhere in that path. Nobody installs an app from a business they have not used yet — and they certainly do not install one to find out whether to use you. An app is for customers you already have. A website is for the ones you don't have yet, and for a local business those are the ones that keep the lights on.

So the question is never "website or app". It is "website, and then — maybe — an app as well". If the website is not doing its job yet, an app will not fix that.

Many "we'll turn your website into an app" offers produce exactly what Apple says it does not want. Its App Review Guidelines, section 4.2, open with this:

Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or "app-like," it doesn't belong on the App Store.

And a little further down:

Other than catalogs, apps shouldn't primarily be marketing materials, advertisements, web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links.

There is a separate rule for app-builder services. Apps made from "a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected unless they are submitted directly by the provider of the app's content" — in other words, by you, from your own developer account, not by the company that sold it to you.

So an app that shows your services, your hours, your gallery and a contact button is the website again, and it may never get past review.

The build is the part people ask about. The part that decides whether you regret it is everything after.

• Two developer accounts, in your name. Apple charges $99 every year. Google charges $25 once. Apple shows that account's name as the seller on the App Store, so it should be yours — and a company needs a D-U-N-S number to enrol as an organisation. A trade name or DBA is not accepted.
• A test before Google will list you. A new personal Google Play account must run a closed test with at least 12 testers for 14 days in a row before the app can go public.
• A review for every change. Each update goes back through the store. Apple says 90% of submissions are reviewed in under a day — but a rejection, or a missing screenshot, can hold a fix for longer.
• A rebuild every year. Apple regularly raises the minimum. Since April 28, 2026, anything uploaded must be built with Xcode 26 and the iOS 26 software kit. An app nobody touches for two years cannot even receive a one-line fix without being brought up to date first.
• Account deletion. If customers can sign up in the app, Apple requires that they can also delete their account from inside it.
• Two versions of everything. An iPhone app, an Android app and the website are three things to keep in step. When your prices change, they change in three places.

You may have heard that Apple and Google take a cut of every sale. For a local business that is mostly a myth. Their commission applies to digital things — subscriptions, in-app content. Apple's rule is the opposite for real goods and services: if your app sells "physical goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app", you must not use Apple's in-app purchase for them. A grooming appointment or a sourdough loaf goes through ordinary card payments, the same Stripe account your website uses.

(If you do sell something digital, small businesses usually pay 15%, not 30% — on your first $1 million a year with Google, and while you stay under $1 million with Apple.)

This is the option nobody selling apps mentions. A modern website can be added to a phone's home screen, where it gets its own icon and opens full-screen, without the browser's address bar — to most people it looks and feels like an app.

It can also send notifications. Android has allowed this for years. On iPhone it arrived with iOS 16.4 in 2023: a website the customer has added to their home screen can ask permission to send notifications, and Apple's WebKit team says they then

work exactly like notifications from other apps. They show on the Lock Screen, in Notification Center, and on a paired Apple Watch.

There are catches. The customer has to add it to their home screen first, and the site can only ask for permission after they tap something like "turn on reminders". But there is no store, no review, no yearly rebuild and no second codebase. Change the website and the "app" has changed too.

For a loyalty stamp card, appointment reminders or "your order is ready", that is usually enough.

It is not always no. An app is worth considering when one of these is true:

• Customers use it weekly or more. A gym booking classes, a café with a loyalty card people use every morning, a club with members. Frequency is the real test; if people visit you twice a year, they will not keep your icon.
• It needs the phone itself. Background location, Bluetooth hardware, the camera used heavily, working properly with no signal — the things a website still cannot do well.
• Customers are asking for it. Not one enthusiastic regular — a steady number of people saying they would use it.
• The website already works. You are found on Google, the booking flow is smooth, and you want to do more for customers you already have.

If none of those is true, the money is better spent on the website, on photographs, or on getting reviews.

• I build the website first, always. The biggest thing I have built for myself — a directory of shops with maps, accounts and payments — is a website on purpose.
• Where it helps, I make it installable, so regular customers can put it on their home screen.
• If you think you need an app, I will go through the list above with you and tell you honestly whether you do — including when the answer is no.
• If one does make sense, the developer accounts go in your name, for the same reason your domain does.